Wendy Baarda’s 2003 report The design and trial of an interactive computer program
Jane Simpson
FollowSovereignty over languages and land
Assertion of intellectual property rights over languages is happening. Here’s an FAQ in a public archive for Australian Aboriginal material (ASEDA, AIATSIS).
Q: Why do speakers restrict access to material in their languages?
A: Many speakers of endangered languages consider that their language is their intellectual property, passed down to them from their ancestors. If it is made freely available to others, then their rights in that language can be diminished. Usually they do not want strangers to use words and sentences of their languages in an inappropriate way, and want to be consulted prior to public use.
At Language Log, Mark Liberman has a couple of comments on Tom’s recent post about this with respect to the Mapuche people’s complaint against Microsoft, and following Geoffrey Pullum’s post on the same topic.
If this idea were really to be accepted into the system governing the usual laws of property, I suspect that the consequences would surprise and displease many of those who start out supporting it . For some discussion, see “The Algonquian morpheme auction” (3/3/2004).
Old language materials: Elkin, Capell and gorilla linguists
A visit to the University of Sydney Archives soothed my sorrow over a Sydney Morning Herald article (13/11/2006 p.10). In this article it’s said of a semi-phonics-based literacy project in Tennant Creek that:
“..Aboriginal languages have been approached by linguists as some kind of historical artefact, but this method makes them usable in a way that has the potential to transform literacy education in indigenous communities”.
This shows a basic confusion between what linguists do – prepare spelling systems, dictionaries and grammars – and what teachers do – devise ways to teach language using the dictionaries and grammars as references, and maybe using the spelling systems if they’re teaching reading and writing. What’s puzzling is the implied criticism in the phrase “some kind of historical artefact”.
Money – I can’t stop thinking about it
If you had $350 to teach kids one word of an Indigenous language, what would you do with it?
• pay a skywriter to write Janapurlalki “eagle” over an Eagles grand final footy match in Tennant Creek?
• pay a cheersquad of 5 people to chant Ja na pu rlal ki at the Eagles footy game?
• buy 35 t-shirts printed with wawarta “clothes” and give them to the kids?
• pay someone to reprogram a Barbie doll to say “Ooooh wawarta!”?
• provide two big loaves of damper bread with, spelled out in raisins, kantirri “bread” or marnukuju jangu “with raisins”, once a week for a year?
or
• pay a language speaker to work with the children once a week for 4 weeks. And record the classes.
• pay a PhD student a scholarship for three years plus preparation, evaluation and testing expenses to work with speakers on devising a curriculum, lesson plans and teaching materials ( oops – only a very cheap PhD student in a very poor country – thanks Ilan!)
Now you’ve got $80,000 to get the kids using 230 words. Would you spend it on 230 reprogrammed Barbie dolls? Or on weekly school language classes for fifteen years? Or on a multi-media CD?
CALL FOR PAPERS: Fifth International East Nusantara Conference
Following on our previous posting…..
The Fifth International East Nusantara Conference (Kupang, Indonesia, 1-3 August 2007) has an important theme for speakers of many endangered languages: Language and Cultural Aspects of Tourism and Sustainable Development. I don’t know of work on this for endangered languages (apart from the negative – we can’t share our language with outsiders because outsider tourist operators might use it and take business away from us) . So it’ll be very interesting to hear the results.
Here’s a call for papers from John Haan.
Digging up prehistoric language spread
It was a perfect cool and sunny Canberra afternoon. Some of the Wednesday Lunch Linguists wanted to avoid spending it on marking. And so we headed off to Peter Bellwood’s seminar at ANU, Early farmers and the spread of languages in South Asia. This was partly based on a paper he gave at the Harvard Kyoto Roundtable in 2005 [1]. Prehistorians can tell grand stories, and this was grand by their standards – wheat, barley, rice and the linguistic history of the whole of India and Pakistan.
Good things in the Language Archives Network News newsletter (No.8)
Check out the latest Language Archives Network News [sorry Dave!]newsletter here. It’s got helpful information on how the Max Planck Institute (Nijmegen) can help you set up a local archive, a system of cataloguing linguistics information (IMDI) about your recordings, and on getting permanent unique resource identifiers for stuff stored on the web. And it’s also got an article on recording information about plants and animals in the field that you might read in conjunction with Tom’s post on this topic.
Government money and Indigenous languages in Australia
The present Australian government’s approach to coordinating and delivering (funding for) general services to Indigenous people has failed on its first trial. That’s the conclusion drawn in an article on a leaked report by Bill Gray (Chris Graham and Brian Johnstone in the National Indigenous Times). So, what happens about coordinating and delivering money for maintaining and documenting Indigenous languages in Australia? How much is spent? Does more go on documenting than on maintaining and supporting education? I got asked these questions the other day, and had to admit surprised ignorance. (Hey, I SHOULD know. I’m a tax-payer). Here’s a start on answering – based on web-trawling.. and maybe some readers can add to it – help, is there an econo-statistician handy?
Paper work in the Western Desert
The making of contemporary Aboriginal learning and literacy: Ngaanyatjarra engagement with changing western practices was a seminar given by Inge Kral today at the Centre for Aboriginal Policy Research. The seminar raised questions about reading and writing practices in Indigenous communities, and about the survival of small Indigenous communities faced with increasing demands from governments for paper work.